we're working in terms to identify those black holes for cops, those black areas. so we learned a lot. i think a lot of this has been captured in the afteraction and i think if we have another iteration next year to definitely have a good starting point. >> we brought from the california national guard, we brought our quick reaction area force and we brought our ic for you so we had 3 different com spans that are cross banded, which is an opportunity that not all dod assets have. they have civilian internet and that is their primary mission, is to cross band between the military and civilians. it worked very well because the command and control element were on an ip common operating picture.

some of our challenges were the radio communications. we got cross banded with san francisco but bringing in commercial satellite down to the marine force that would be on the ground was one of the challenges that we had to work through after the event. it was successful but it's something that in planning in an emergency we need to make sure that the correct satellite assets are down to the end users, the people on the ground. >> hello, so we had a lot of success i think we talked about, at least at the ocean beach location we were able to get the ip internet communications with web eoc, we had really good telephone communications, you know, with our blackberries, our smart phones and some satellite phones. i think from at least the

city's perspective our biggest challenge was the lan communications. we've worked really hard to improve interoperatability communications with the city. if we were needing assistance from oakland police department and they needed to come into san francisco, we have a really good structure to be able to implement interoperatable communications over the radio. but with the military this is a whole new set of radio frequencies, radio technology, even before the planning we didn't know what they had. it took us several planning opportunities and meetings to flush through some of that information and one of the biggest take aways for us, as a city we're required to have a tactical interoperatable communications plan. it describes how you interoperate in an emergency or an event within the city as well as regional partners. we don't

have that with military and i think that's one of the biggest take aways, we need to really flesh out a document so we have captured who our contacts are, what technology they are going to bring to the table and start that initial planning from the get-go. we also had some technical challenges with land mobile radio. you know, we have the coverage issues, but we were stationed at the san francisco police department command van, i had some very sharp people there who were able to work through a lot of those interoperatability issues so a huge thank you to the police department and also the fire department and sheriff's department were also there able to provide us with otherality gnat communications paths, only channels we were able to use for the exercise. it was a really good team effort by the city, by the city departments. >> general myat mentioned this morning, it's a common theme, the ability to meet the other

people you are going to be working with or at least their agencies, how they do things, something i want to hear more about and i'm going to start with you because this is your first opportunity to work with the military. describe that experience, often times words and nomenclature can be new for all of us. >> right off the bat, the military shows up at ocean beach and they were ready to work and ready to work regardless of how our operation was going. i talked about the cop, after our first briefing they said it would be better during the map there, but not during the first meeting, there was no interruption, no confusion, no conflict, they were ready to work with us whatever we needed. three things i saw were things we could work on. the idea of a common lexicon, we in the

city, we will call say sar chavez street army street and back and forth. if you are not from san francisco and you are coming from somewhere else, as many of the folks were, they didn't necessarily know what we were talking about there. we're moving through our language, moving tlau our acronyms. it would have been very simple for me to come with a one pager even dealing with the slang, drop that on the table connected with the cop so everyone knew what was going on. that would have been helpful. that was the first one where i saw an area where we could do some good work. the second is typing, the concept of when i unload a front end loader that i also include what personnel will be with that equipment. we call it typing, many of you know the same thing, you know about it. the military came with all their equipment typed perfectly and it came to us right there. we didn't have that. i'm being very candid with all of you.

we didn't have that coming in. so what we did was spent time telling them how many personnel come with each truck, each piece of equipment we have. the benefit of that is i saw the great relationship between the military and the staff walking through the equipment, understanding where the gaps were on our side and their side as we started ordering up equipment to bring it to the city. which is absolutely going to happen, we will put orders in early, see it arriving within a few hours, within a few days, but knowing what each other has would be helpful. easy to solve. this last one around shared mission, that was told to me and i really get it. you know, we're moving forward with a game plan and we hit the ground there in ocean beach and i've got a map and i know exactly what streets have got to be cleared, which ones are in order. i know exactly what has to be done to get the streets open, get the routes open,

getting emergency equipment in, getting hospitals open. how easy it would have been to bring that shared mission even offline with some folks, why are you doing this street, so everyone could get on board and be a part of that same mission. we set up the operations center, the incident command post, we kind of used an ics type structure in settinging it upment and i led with a lot of folks that i knew that knew how to run that. next time i would think more about the military folks by asking a question, who has experience being a plans chief, who has experience being an operations chief, bringing more of the military in who were ready to work and knew what to do, as part of our family, could have had more of them in leadership positions bringing the team closer together. it was a great experience for me. it's absolutely going to happen. we hope we would have that great working relationship and we expect we would. we can

take this to another level and be working much more closely with the department of defense, all levels with our military which it was a strong working relationship there and these were just some of the take aways for me. interested to hear what others have to say about that. but again, i came out of there feeling very positive and with a few punch list items that wopt take much for the city to do but that we can put in place and we will be that much stronger when the earthquake happens. >> from our perspective it was very seamless, cooperative. we understood the cq structure right there out of the gate, we're there to support. we fell in under the department of public works rep and we have some training in ics, there's dod instructions, cnic instructions, they are not our operational chain of command but we all work on bases so we're there to support them

also if needed. so we do have some understanding of ics. our challenge is to become more familiar with the ics system so we're more fopl when we get into a system to support that. there are planners that get that training but we need to take it a level down so the lno's that are going to go to the incident command post also have a lot of ics experience. we had enough to get by so when they did call an objective meeting or a tactics meeting, we knew what he was talking about. when he was developing an action plan, we understood that, but we could have benefited more and we take this on board, too, to get more people trained up at that next level down. >> from my experience as the exercise, i would agree with

everybody here. the first thing we have to do is understand, to understand what the priorities are so the first thing we need is an orientation. not just a map orientation, although that's very helpful, we're not that familiar with san francisco, where the hospitals are, where the priority routes are, but we also need a quick orientation what the priorities are. where is the focus of effort so we can orient ourselves and our capabilities towards that. second thing we need is to understand the intent. what is the priority, where are they and that also keys us to what capabilities we might be able to focus on. of course the third thing we need to know what the resource shortfalls are. that will allow us to determine what kinds of equipment we need to put towards that. but what i saw in the exercise was a good

information flow and an atmosphere of a team effort at the location at ocean beach. >> thank you. thank you, all. when we have an vent in the future and we know it's going to happen, we just don't know when, i sometimes tell my team we're one day closer to the next disaster. i don't know when it's going to be, but we're one day closer. when that happens it's unlikely that the people we exercised with are actually going to be the people who are responding. so knowing that, what are the top 3 things that you might share, your elevator speech, if you will. rob mentioned institutional knowledge. what do you want to take and give to someone else when they come to san francisco? and this is for our military participants. captain houston? >> my recommendation, dod element coming into a city

incident, is, one, bring a list of your communications capabilities, your frequencies and documented in its capabilities, not necessarily the acronym of your branch. we came in with our hf radios and lucas took that information, he understood it and put it on to his ics form. so that's the no. 1 priority that i would say to bring in initially. 2, i would say understand the primary situational awareness. in the military we call it a pay plan or primary alternate. what i would say is understand what your operators want to see as their primary form of communication and command and control. 3, i would say communicate in the clear. and with that what i mean is identify your equipment by capabilities, and also the radios need to be unencrypted single channel and plain text, which is something we don't operate a lot on in the battlefield, but this isn't the battlefield, this is home.

so that's a new communication change as we move forward in supporting our civil authorities. >> okay, i understood the question perhaps a little bit different. what would we tell, you know, personnel coming in for another iteration of this drill. and for me, no. 1, is of course military folks do this a lot, is to read the after action. i think a lot of work, time and thought has been put into that. i think one of the best conferences that i've attended was the very last one in september, which was the after action. i know jill raycauft and lucas ekrode have taken this to heart so we do have a road map for next year.

read the after action. no. 2, captain houston mentioned it already, it's think open architecture. i noticed that departures for the military, our communication is encrypted, when you are doing humanitarian assistance or even here on national soil, you need to be able to communicate. so that was a take away, probably unencrypted plain text communication. think open architecture. the last one that i have is definitely familiarize yourself with disca, it's coming to the forefront, communications quite specifically. that means knowing what civilian authorities utilize in terms of frequencies and wave forms and that's not something that we do every day as communicators. so it provides an opportunity for a more well-round ed case and i certainly got into that territory this year. thank you.

>> there's definitely 3 things i'm going to hit hard with my relief. first is understand that c2 piece because it is complicated. we don't understand under that structure normally. it's very important that my relief understands or any disca planner understands that c2 piece. second is understand the ics and then take the time to get the training. we put together a pretty robust training plan in preparation for this. we did the fema online course, eoc course at nasne, hadr course, trained with cal fire, take the time to take that training. it's tough to fit it in but it's important to fit it in and

it will make us more effective. we did an exercise back in may in preparation for this and developed a pretty detailed concept of operations. we built load plan, timelines, spare parts lists, we really got into the weeds, thinking about the second and third tier effects, so i want my relief to understand that and i want him to know where that plan is so he can pull it right off the shelf if this ever happens and be ready to respond quickly instead of trying to figure this all out when we need to be getting underway. >> i'll boil mine down into just one, and that is i will pass to my relief to continue to support events like this and look for opportunities to continue to learn how we best in the military can integrate with our civilian and federal

contemporaries to be prepared for an eventuality that we hope will never come, but we certainly should be prepared for. so the one thing i'm passing on is keep the momentum. >> thank you, all. one other benefit that was cited in the after action review and also was mentioned today is the chance it meet someone else from the other agency. we also heard a lot about training, understanding ics, understanding dsca and that's defense support of civil authorities. it's the guiding principles for how our armed services are going to support civilians when something happens. and i think those are common across a lot of the themes you are going to hear today and throughout the weekend. so i'd kind of like to take those two off the table because they are sort of gimmes and put it to you, what are the things you told your boss about this

exercise and what is something that for next year you would like to see us do? michelle, if you'd start us off. >> so i think that the major task for next year when we do this communications drill, which i hope we continue to do, and i think you mentioned this earlier, we assumed that all of the city's primary communications were online and operational. we used 800 megahertz push to talk radios here. we assumed that system was online and operational and i think next year it would be a really good exercise for us to pull that communications capability out of the picture and use military assets. i think we're going to have a lot of lessons learned out of that activity and it would be a good exercise for the city personnel to understand how they would operate using the military aid. >> i think one of the things that i wrote in my after action report it my boss was about

training. we actually have an acu1,000 type capability in pendleton and that is a piece of equipment that bee don't train with routinely the expeditionary folks. i think there is an opportunity in training, it's great when marines get to see the gear and do that type of cross banding we spoke about. civilian authority operates in 700-800 megahertz range. we know fires happen a lot and we're often asked to support so training is a big recommendation i make. >> what i'd recommend is practice makes perfect and flexibility is required. so with communications being flex i will and you have to practice. we did some training events with the acu's in order to teach other agencies how to cross band the radios but it continues to grow. next year there will be a new version of the acu's, which does cross banding of radios. as long as

we stay engaged we keep communicating and we keep working to the and keep the lines of communication open, i think the exercise will go excellent as we grow. >> i told my boss that communication's at the heart of everything. the stronger we are with our communication abilities the more success we will have going forward. not to beat a dead horse on this, but the common operating picture was really the point i brought back to my boss that i said would solve the shared mission issue, would solve the lexicon and slang issues and bring everyone to the same table understanding where we're going and to develop a few tools not only sort of specific to the department of public works to show our piece, but then more broadly to the city that we can bring to the incident and share, regardless of who's there, what part of the department of defense or other entities that are out there that can come to the table and hit the ground running as a result of that tool. that was my biggest take away and that's my main

recommendation to my boss. >> i was fortunate, my boss was there. so i think we both shared the concept that interoperatability is the key. we need to continue to work to ensure that we have interoperatability with the federal, state and local governments and next year i think we'll take this exercise to another level. i'm not sure what that's going to be, but between now and then we will be working to ensure it's successful. >> i told my boss that based on all the planning we did, the training we did, the exercise specifically functional exercise specifically, we're far better prepared to respond than we were 6 months ago. i think we were prepared then but as a result of all those efforts we're that much more ready. three things i broke down in my aar, planning, the office of emergency management, there's something like 19 entities that

participated in this exercise. that's an overwhelming amount of different agencies to bring together for one agency. we do a lot of training, we run a lot of drills, but it's not on that scale where we're working with 19 different people or entities. execution, extremely smooth. the integration piece was key and finally the way ahead, so what's next. well, we got to continue to refine our standard operating procedures, continue to refine the con op, continue to make recommendations and continue to track those lessons lerbed. for my boss, a lot of the work starts when the exercise is over. it's not over just when the exercise is over, you have to continue to push that through and make sure that those lessons learned get incorporated into the plan. >> i think commander carismos said it well. a lot of the planning we do comes after the exercise. that's when we have a chance to test things out and

see what doesn't work. we would prefer to find that out now than when the incident takes place. i think the panelists have given us a lot to think about but i'd like to open it up to you. what questions do you have for any of our command and control or our communications experts? if you have a question, please put your hand up and we have a microphone we can run around. jill? >> i fresh very much all the comments that were made and it's impressive what you have done and learned. i have a question. when you are operating somewhere and you are communicating with each other and you are getting information and a lot of it is action oriented, you are really operating in a sea of information and communication in the sense that everybody these days can find out stuff,

communicate. a lot of the information they get is wrong, bad things can get communicated. how do you go about interacting with this sea of information that's around you and trying to be sure that it contains what's accurate, is helpful rather than harmful to your efforts? >> coordination and documentation of knowledge management, usually done through the operations. information that flows in can be captured, it's easier for the operations personnel to make command and control decisions. i think we used web eoc as that emergency management piece for this exercise. >> i would add from my experience, both in combat

operations and in hadr's, never believe the first report. information typically self-corrects over time and it's incumbent upon us to verify before resources are allocated. so absolutely, sir, it is a sea of information coming from very far and wide sources and it's very important for us to bring in all the information and ensure that it's filtered. and as i spoke before, it needs to be filtered into buckets of emergencies, priorities and ra teen information and that truly is an art. but it has been my experience that as reports come in, they are typically not exactly correct but they do self-correct over time as more information resources are put against it. >> are there other questions? >> i'm interested in your use of social media, whether it be

tweeter or cloud sourcing or other techniques that you use to gather information quickly and from a wide variety of on scene participants. >> so the use of social media to get situational awareness? >> i know there was the topic of discussion in many of our planning meetings and i think even mr. rob dudgeon at one point mentioned that's how people know what's happening, communicating via their cell phones about what's happening. but i personally think that has a limited application, right? so when cell phone towers are not working any more and we i think had a blackout in san diego last year, last fall, cell phones weren't working. so social media i think can help and may work and you can get through populations that way, but i think it will

be important to know that also has its limitations and at one point that goes. that's when you need to thank back-up communications and that's where the military can also be a force multiplier. >> from the department of emergency management perspective, we have a phenomenal social media team that gets information out over multiple channels using facebook and twitter. we also have an alert sf system that we use that disseminates information just about the helicopter landing during yesterday's exercise, so we have those tools in place and just for your point, i think that would be a really great thing to add even to the communications drill, we know now how to communicate internally at the incident but how do you share that information and get it out. i

think we could use some of those forms of exercise we use day-to-day as part of the exercise. >> i think the concept of emergency is also relative. if members of the armed forces are getting called out, that is a big emergency. for someone who is commuting to work in the morning the fact there is no electricity in one area of the city so traffic is going to be horrible and they can't get their child to day care, that is an emergency to them. that's where we use social media so we can find other things that may be happening in the city so we can send it out to our followers, also, as michelle mentioned, preemptively let others know here's what's happening with your day. >> i heard you guys mentioned you used your blackberries and cell phones to communicate with each other during the exercise. at a point where we have dsca,

there's a high probability, i would think, we wouldn't be able to did that. was that folded into your planning perhaps for the future to say, hey, we're not going to use that stuff today but just use the stuff the military brings to the table. >> we used 800 megahertz radios to report from ocean beach back to the department operations center in public works and we just jumped to that point. my staff know how to use radios, the military knew how to use them, we sort of went into our groups, it was a little cumbersome at times, hard to hear, but they were solid, we knew they were going to be working. i think for the most part it jumped. honestly we didn't have a very detailed conversation about cell phone ability or inability, but it seemed to work. that was our back-up plan and i felt it worked quite well. >> i think that's a very good